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We partnered with Talenti Gelato and our favorite ice cream tinkerer Cristina Sciarra to show you how to make non-dairy, chocolatey, subtly spicy milkshakes.

"Non-dairy" and "milkshakes" don't seem like they'd really go together, right? Oh, but they do, and Cristina Sciarra knows how to make those words sing alongside one another. Cristina is the author of one of our newest cookbooks, Ice Cream & Friends, for which she wrote 30 original recipes and really earned the title of Ice Cream Queen. (Our cookbook crew really took one for the team on this one: They photographed—and ate, duh—60 ice creams and lived to tell the tale!)

Photo by Julia Gartland

Cristina recently swung by the office—because, well, we missed her and her ice cream tinkering— to teach us a few tricks with gelato and sorbetto (there is a pretty mind-boggling ice cream cake on your horizon, just you wait). But first: these milkshakes have a few tricks up their sleeves. They're non-dairy (made with coconut milk and chocolate sorbetto!), subtly spicy (kicked up with cayenne powder), and simple (think 5 ingredients, hallelujah). Plus, the name is just really fun to say—Non-Dairy Choco-Coco-Chile Milkshakes. Try that 3 times fast!

Watch Cristina walk you through how to whip up these milkshakes, and then get the recipe below:

I once had some dark chocolate protein powder, some kind of chocolate yogurt that tasted horrible on its own, and some dark chocolate almond milk. Made the best chocolate smoothie I'd ever had. Also, how did you get your ice so crystal clear?

My chocolate breakfast shake is also non-dairy: 1 cold banana, sliced; 2 tablespoons shelled hemp seeds; 1 tablespoon orange juice concentrate (read John McPhee's long-read on oranges -- it's in book form as well as in The New Yorker archives -- for information on why concentrate is so deeply flavored); a heaping teaspoon of dark chocolate cocoa powder; and a cup or so of vanilla unsweetened almond milk. Blend using an immersion blender. In the summer, I freeze almond milk in an ice cube tray and pop a few of cubes in as well, after blending. ;o)